12 Most Inspiring Women Politicians of All Time

Queen Victoria

Queen Victoria

Presiding over one of the largest empires ever seen, Queen Victoria (1819-1901) was Great Britain’s head of state for most of the nineteenth century – a period during which her realm stretched from Gibraltar to Hong Kong and the South Pacific, from Canada to India and Ceylon, from Australia to vast African colonies that included today’s Kenya, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Nigeria and Sudan. Her Victorian Age was synonymous with personal propriety and middle-class morality. One of the last British monarchs to actively influence British politics, Victoria publicly attempted to appear aloof from partisan affairs.